


Gordon Tracy: Joker In The Pack

by ThreadbareT



Category: Thunderbirds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:06:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23203690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThreadbareT/pseuds/ThreadbareT
Summary: Thunderbird 4 is on its way to a deep sea rescue.Gordon isn't joking around any more.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	Gordon Tracy: Joker In The Pack

The hours pass like minutes, probably because my heart is running so fast I’m worried it wants to get out of my chest.  
The mining colony, the vast towers of reinforced alloys, and plastic-laminate glass, that clung to the chasm walls like wasp nests faded out of view long ago. They were an odd kind of beautiful, entire cities hanging off the sheer face, the mining platforms chewing their way into the natural fissures, following the seams of minerals.  
Their lights had been swallowed by the darkness.  
I had to visit some when I was with WASP, the World Aquatic Security Patrol. I had a bathyscaphe under my command, and I was researching farming methods that were sustainable down here in the dark. It was pretty interesting.  
“You are reaching the edge of the H-H-Hadal Zone Gordon,” Brains says over my headphones. “You will be out of range in four minutes. Be c-c-careful down there. We want you home safe.”  
Bless his practical, odour resistant synthetic socks. “Is Virgil still insisting on cooking?”  
“I’m afraid so.”  
“Then slow and steady will work for me,” I say, with what I hope sounds like a grin.  
There is a reply, but I can’t hear it. The distortion is too great.  
I am on my own.  
It doesn’t matter. I know that Pa is scowling into his handset, chiding me for my jokes, in an all bark and no bite kind of way. He’d hate to admit it, but he gets why I have to joke.  
Jeff Tracy is everything we like to think an Astronaut to be: Brave, stoic, chiselled good looks (more or less), and cool as a penguin’s martini under pressure. Turn the screw, and he becomes as rigid as a sergeant major.  
If you’re flying to the stars in an explosive cigar tube, with a few thin layers of ceramic armour and alloy plating, between you and the vacuum of space, you have to do something to keep the fear under control. Don’t ever believe that the fear is gone, that those guys act without fear.  
None of us do.  
The trick is to find a way to lock the fear down, and push on past it. That’s what bravery is: acting despite fear, not without it. My father does that with a stiff upper lip and a killer stare.  
I have a different method. I laugh in the face of danger (mostly because I don’t want danger to see me crying).  
Sixteen hours ago, there was a rockfall. It ripped a mining platform off the wall of the abyss, and buried the giant robot centipede in the deepest, coldest, darkest, place on the surface of this world. They are buried, ten kilometres down, where the water is kept liquid by the pressure, despite the temperature. Pressures of over a thousand times those experienced on the surface. Pressures that can crush hull plates.  
I’ve spent most those hours on my way here.  
You see, even in an emergency, I can’t rush. This little yellow machine I’m sitting in is the most advanced submarine out there (and I have seen the best the rest of the world has to offer), but it still has to obey the laws of physics. The only way to rush down there, is to go slowly, letting the hullplates on the outside react to the pressures, and the atmosphere in here adapt to compensate for the depths. Rush too fast, and my blood chemistry will poison me, until I’m too dopey, or too dead, to notice Thunderbird Four coming apart at the seams.  
So, what do I do?  
I sit here, and try to keep my mind on my job, hoping that if my concentration flags, for a reason other than boredom, the cold, or well justified heebie-jeebies I’m aware enough to notice.  
I could play chess, but it’s pretty dull on my own, so I have to find other ways to keep my mind alert.  
Well gee Gordon, I hear nobody say, didn’t you mention something about farming methods? How do you fit an entire farm in small enough space to make it sustainable in a deep see colony?  
Good question! Like everything drummed into me in the Submarine Corps and WASP, the key was to eliminate waste, and to seek efficiency.  
Growing crops in a field is (and as the grandson of farm labourers, I’m duty bound to point out I mean this purely in the mathematical sense) a wasteful game. You have to draw nutrients out of the soil, water a whole field in saturation, and hope the weather is in your favour.  
Imagine we are building a farm from the ground up, with no soil, or bedrock to base it upon. We start by getting rid of fields. They are too big, and messy, for a mining colony. Instead we have many layers of growing space, like shelves. We can get rid of the soil too. Instead we plant our seeds in a jelly made out of algae. It contains the same nutrients as soil, but they aren’t spread about the ground, they are right there, in abundance. It also means we don’t waste any water on empty soil, so we need less water.  
The next benefit comes from the lighting. Each layer of the farm has a lighting grid that offers the optimum light, for each stage of the growth, from sprouting to harvest. It tailors the heat and light to the needs of the crop, not only simulating natural conditions, but optimising them.  
The project was a success for WASP. It got rolled out across the world, in all kinds of deep colonies. I even heard of a few submarines using the basic concepts to grow tomatoes or fruit trees.  
Oh. Here we go. I got a ping.  
“International Rescue to Mining Platform Odysseus. Do you read me?”  
Static.  
“International Rescue to Mining Platform Odysseus. Do you hear me?”  
Come on…  
“This is the Odysseus,” a voice says, through the warble of distortion. “How are we talking to you?”  
“I am thirty minutes away, and closing,” I reported. “What is the status of your crew?”  
“Cold and wet,” the voice laughs. It’s a woman, head strong and assured, despite the sense of humour. “We made it to the bridge segment, and have sealed off against the leaks. No way of drying our clothes, but… we have a raspberry bush, and some bottles of water, but it has been a long night.”  
“Any injuries?” I ask.  
There is a telling pause. “Some broken bones, and a puncture wound to the abdomen. Clarke is in a bad way, and the cold isn’t helping. The heaters are dead. Everything is dead.”  
“Your air reserves?”  
“We’re relying on recycling. It should hold up for half an hour.”  
An idea hits me. “You had a bush? A plant?”  
“We’re not going to burn it,” she says, with a chuckle.  
“Doe the lamps work? They might offer a little warmth.”  
There’s a pause, the sound of switches being thrown. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”  
“What kind of a wound?” I ask.  
“He took a lump of shrapnel. It’s dressed and stable, but we need to get him to the colony, for emergency surgery.”  
Somewhere in the back of my mind is the reason I have to laugh and joke.  
The realities of my profession were always scary, but a few years back, while Pa was making this crazy, brilliant, dream of his (of ours) a reality, the fear became…personal. I was racing about in a hydrofoil at four hundred knots, and I hit a problem, the kind of problem that turns boats to splinters and matchwood. Everybody thinks it was the months in hospital that broke my spirit, so it had to be rebuilt. It wasn’t. It wasn’t even the long wait for rescue, clinging to life.  
It was that one moment, realising one of the lumps of boat was in my abdomen, and that if there was going to be a Gordon to rescue, Gordon was going to have to do something about the really nasty looking dagger of scrap poking out his body.  
Emergency training can teach you how to deal with the situation, it can’t teach you how to make numb and trembling fingers do the deed, and that instant, when you make yourself, with you push through the fear, it changes…everything.  
I clear my throat. “What’s your name?”  
“Sarah Orrin.”  
“Sarah, you are doing amazing. Trust me, that you are talking is proof of that. And you aren’t alone, so the hardest part of this is over. I’m going to find a hatch I can dock with, and I am going to get you out of there, and back to the colony. I promise.”  
Her voice suggests a smile. “Are you in the habit of making promises you can’t keep?”  
“No.”  
“You are a bad liar,” she chides me.  
“I’m not lying, or boasting, or…” I clear my throat. “You’ll see.”  
I reach the wreck. Two thirds of the platform have been completely flattened, and ground into the silt. Only the front portion remains, and it is laying on its back. One hatch is buried, one has buckled, and that leaves one that isn’t facing the right way.  
Oh what the Hell, Scott can do the vertical take off thing, and reverse park through a swimming pool. How hard can it be? I’ve seen Scott forget what wrist he put his watch on, so I’m guessing it can’t be impossible.  
“You’re going for the portside hatch?” Orrin asks.  
“It’s the only option left. It will make loading your friends aboard an issue, but I think if I set a hammock for the wounded party, I can hang it so we can steady him, and he can remain steady and stable whatever moves I need to pull to get away.” I draw a breath. “Is that a chance you guys will take?”  
I know the answer before she tells me, because it’s the only chance we have.  
I bring my bird down slow, cut the power, and let myself drop into the narrow slot. Easy does it. Gentle. I drift down, then power up the magnets on my docking clamps and let them pull me to the platform, my nose pointing to the surface, my butt towards the seabed. Four is a rocket waiting to launch.  
I cling to the wall, and lower myself down to the hatch. I bang a few times, and get an answer.  
I lay my hands on the lever.  
This is it. The neons indicate green. The instruments say the seal is safe.  
If I’m a millimetre out, if I got this even the tiniest bit wrong, I am about to condemn us all to a sudden, terrible death.  
“Hey!” I shout. “Before I open this door, I have to warn you, I have heard all the Beatles jokes before. I’m much more a Shadows kind of guy, so… depending on your tastes, this could be a long ride home.”  
I pull on the lever.  
The hatch opens with a whoosh of air, and six grime caked, shivering, pale, faces stare back at me. I smile with all the confidence of the world. “I need a hand setting up a hammock.”  
A woman nods and steps aboard. Sarah Orrin gives me a slight smile, as we set to work.  
She talks to me the whole way back to the colony. I don’t mind. It keeps my mind off all the stuff, all the ridiculously small things, that could go wrong.


End file.
